putation he vehemently denies in his Memoirs ; | Next, the indefatigable servant of the state bui our readers will probably agree with us in falls in with an old republican, who has nut thinking, that his denial leaves the question changed with the times, who regrets the red exactly where it was.

cap and the tree of liberty, who has not unThus much is certain, that he was not re- learned the Thee and Thon, and who still substrained from exercising the office of censor by scribes his letters with “ Health and Fraterany scruple of conscience or honour; for he nity.” Into the ears of this sturdy politician did accept an office, compared with which that our friend pours forth a long series of com. of censor, odious as it is, may be called an plaints. What evil times! What a change august and beneficent magistracy. He began since the days when the Mountain governed to have what are delicately called relations France! What is the First Consul but a king with the police. We are not sure that we under a new name? What is this Legion of have formed, or that we can convey, an exact Honour but a new aristocracy? The old su notion of the nature of Barère's new calling. perstition is reviving with the old tyranny. It is a calling unknown in our country. It There is a treaty with the Pope, and a provi. has, indeed, often happened in England, that a sion for the clergy. Emigrani nobles are re. plot has been revealed to the government by turning in crowds, and are better received at one of the conspirators. The informer has the Tuileries than the men of the tenth of Ausometimes been directed to carry it fair to- g'ist. This cannot last. What is life without wards his accomplices, and to let the evil de- liberty? What terrors has death to the true sign come to full maturity. As soon as his patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire, bework is done, he is generally snatched from the stows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints public gaze, and sent to some obscure village, that there will soon be great news, and that or to some remote colony. The use of spies, the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not even to this extent, is in the highest degree quite extinct. The next day he is close priunpopular in England; but a political spy by soner, and all his papers are in the hands of profession, is a creature from which our island the government. is as free as it is from wolves. In France the To this vocation, a vocation compared with race is well known, and was never more nume- which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of rous, more greedy, more cunning, or more sav- a pimp, is honourable, did Barère now descend. age, than under the government of Bonaparte. It was his constant practice, as often as he en.

Our idea of a gentleman in relations with rolled himself in a new party, to pay his footthe consular and imperial police may perhaps ing with the heads of old friends. He was a: be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to con- first a royalist; and he made atonement by vey it to our readers. We image to ourselves watering the tree of liberty with the blood of a well dressed person, with a soft voice and Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he affable manners. His opinions are those of made atonement by murdering Vergniaud and the society in which he finds himself, but a lit- Gensonné. He fawned on Robespierre up to tle stronger. He often complains, in the lan- the eighth of Thermidor; and he made atoneguage of honest indignation, that what passes men: by moving, on the ninth, that Robespierre in private conversation finds its way strangely should be beheaded without a trial. He was 'to the government, and cautions his associates now enlisted in the service of the new to take care what they say when they are not narchy; and he proceeded to atone for his sure of their company. As for himself, he republican heresies by sending republican owns that he is indiscreet. He can never re-throats to the guillotine. frain from speaking his mind; and that is the Among his most intimate associates was a reason that he is not prefect of a department. Gascon named Demerville, who had been

In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears employed in an office of high trnst under the two friends talking earnestly about the king committee of public safety. This man was and the Count of Artois. He follows them into fanatically attached to the Jacobin system of a coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, politics, and, in conjunction with other enthu calls for his half-dish and his small glass of siasts of the same class, formed a design cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied against the First Consul. A hint of this do. with the news. His neighbonrs go on talking sign escaped him in conversation with Barère. without restraint, and in the style of persons Barère carried the intelligence to Lannes, who warmly attached to the exiled family. They commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville depart, and he follows them half round the was arrested, tried, and beheaded; and among voulevards till he fairly tracks them to their the witnesses who appeared against him was apartments, and learns their names from the his friend Barère. porters. From that day every letter addressed The account which Barère has given of to either of them is sent from the post-office to these transactions is studionsly contiised and the police, and opened. Their correspondents grossly dishonest. We think, however, that become known to the government, and are we can discern, through much falsehood and carefully watched. Six or eight honest fami- much artful obscurity, some truths which he lies, in different parts of France, find them- labours to conceal. It is clear to us that the selves at once under the frown of power, with government suspected him of what the Italians oui heing able to guess what offence they have call a double treason. It was natural that such given. One person is dismissed from a public a suspicion should attach to him. He hau in office; another learns with dismay that his times not very remote, zealously preached the promising son has been turned out of the Po- Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyraut lytechnic school.

deserves higher praise than he who saves a

mo

citizen. Was it possible that the member of himself conspicuous even among the crowd the committee of public safety, the king-killer, of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his the queen-killer, could in earnest mean to de- adulation. He translated into French a conliver his old confederates, his bosom friends, temptible volume of Italian verses, entitled, to the executioner, solely because they had “ The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious planned an act which, if there were any truth accession of Napoleon the First, by the Shepin his own Carmagnoles, was in the highest herds of Arcadia." He commenced a new Segree virtuous and glorious ? Was it not series of Carmagnoles very different from more probable that he was really concerned in those which had charmed the Mountain. The the plot, and that the information which he title of Emperor of the French, he said, was gave was merely intended to lull or to mislead mean; Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Eqthe police ? Accordingly spies were set on the rope. King of Italy was too humble an appclspy. He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to lation ; Napoleon's style ought to be King of come within twenty leagues till he received Kings. lurther orders. Nay, he ran no small risk of But Barère laboured to small purpose in being sent, with some of his old friends, to both his vocations. Neither as a writer nor as Madagascar.

a spy was he of much use. He complains He made his peace, however, with the go- bitterly that his paper did not sell. While the Pernment so far, that he was not only permittea, Journal des Debals, then flourishing under the during some years, to live unmolested, but able management of Geoffroy, had a circulawas employed in the lowest sort of political tion of at least twenty thousand copies, the drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while he Memorial Antibritannique never, in its most pros. was preparing to visit the south of France, he perous times, had more than fifteen hundred received a letter which deserves to be inserted. subscribers; and these subscribers were, with It was froin Duroc, who is well known to have scarcely an exception, persons residing far from enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the and favour.

name of Barère had not yet lost its influence. “The First Consul, having been informed A writer who cannot find readers, generally that Citizen Barère is about to set out for the attributes the public neglect to any cause country, desires that he will stay at Paris. rather than to the true one; and Barère was

“Citizen Barère will every week draw up a no exception to the general rule. His old report of the state of public opinion on the hatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That proceedings of the government, and generally city, he says, has no sympathy with France. on every thing which, in his judgment, it will No Parisian cares to subscribe to a journal be interesting to the First Consul to learn. which dwells on the real wants and interests

* He may write with perfect freedom. of the country. To a Parisian nothing is so

“ He will deliver his reports under seal into ridiculous as patriotism. The higher classes General Duroc's own hand, and General Duroc of the capital have always been devoted to will deliver them to the First Consul. But it England. A corporal from London is better is absolutely necessary that nobody should sus-received among them than a French general. pect that this species of communication takes A journal, therefore, which attacks England place; and, should any such suspicion get has no chance of their support. abroad, the First Consul will cease to receive A much better explanation of the failure of the reports of Citizen Barère.

the Memorinl, was given by Bonaparte at St. " It will also be proper that Citizen Barère Helena. “ Barère," said he to Barry O'Meara, should frequently insert in the journals articles had the reputation of being a man of talent; tending to animate the public mind, particu- but I did not find hiin so. I employed bim to larly against the English."

write; but he did not display ability. He used During some years Barère continued to dis- many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argucharge the functions assigned to him by his ment; nothing but coglionerie wrapped up in master. Secret reports, filled with the talk of high-scunding language.”. coffee-houses, were carried by him every week The truth is, that though Barère was a man to the Tuileries. His friends assure us that he of quick parts, and could do with ease what took especial pains to do all the harm in his he could do at all, he had never been a good power to the returned emigrants. It was not writer. In the day of his power, he had been his fault if Napoleon was not apprised of every in the habit of haranguing an excitable andimurmur and every sarcasm which old mar-ence on exciting topics. The faults of his quesses who had lost their estates, and old cler- style passed uncensured; for it was a time of gymen who had lost their benefices, uttered literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a against the imperial system. M. Hippolyte patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary Carnot, we grieve to say, is so much blinded rules of composition as well as the ordinary by party spirit, that he seems to reckon this rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. dirty wickedness among his hero's titles to But there had now been a literary as well as a public esteem.

civil reaction. As there was again a throne Barère was, at the same time, an indefati- and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a gable journalist and pamphleteer. He set up a hierarchy, so was ihere a revival of classical paper directed against England, and called the taste. Honor was again paid to the prose of 31emorial Antibritannique. He planned a work Pascal and Masillon, and to the verse of Racine entitled, “France made great and illustrious and La Fontaine. The oratory which had deby Napoleon.” When the imperial govern-lighted the galleries of the Convention, was not ment was established, the old regicide made only as much out of date as the language of

Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated weekly to the Tuileries till the year 1807. At in the public mind with images of horror. All length, while he was actually writing the two the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the guillo- hundred and twenty-third of ihe series, a note tine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of was put into his hands. It was from Duroc, the Academy, his conceits and his jokes, his and was much more perspicuous than polite. Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had Barère was requested to send no more of his become as odious as the cant of the Puritans reports to the palace, as the emperor was too was in England after the Restoration.

basy to read them. Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces the Reign of Terror, had now ceased to fear even the shell of the tortoise; and the contempt them. He was all-powerful and at the height of the court was felt to the quick even by ihe of glory; they were weak and universally ab- callous heart of Barère. He had humbled horred. He was a sovereign, and it is probable himself to the dust; and he had humbled him. that he already meditated a matrimonial alli- self in vain. Having been eminent among the ance with sovereigns. He was naturally un-rulers of a great and victorious state, he had willing, in bis new position, to hold any inter- s!ooped to serve a master in the vilest capacicourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had ties; and he had been told that, even in those Barère's literary assistance been important to capacities, he was not worthy of the piltance the government, personal aversion might have which had been disdainfully flung to him. He yielded to considerations of policy; but there was now degraded below the level even of the was no motive for keeping terms with a worth- hirelings whom the government employed in less man who had also proved a worthless the most infamous offices. He stood idle in writer. Bonaparte, therefore, gave loose to the market-place, not because he thought any his feelings. Barère was not gently dropped, office too infamous; but because none would not sent into an honourable retirement, but hire him. spurned and scourged away like a troublesome Yet he had reason to think himself fortudog. He had been in the habit of sending six nate; for, had all that is avowed in these Me. copies of his journal on fine paper daily to the moirs been then known, he would have received Tuileries. Instead of receiving the thanks and very different tokens of the imperial displeapraises which he expected, he was dryly told sure. We learn from himself, that while pubthat the great man had ordered five copies to lishing daily columns of flattery on Bonaparte, be sent back. Still he toiled on; still he che- and while carrying weekly budgets of calumny rished a hope that at last Napoleon would to the Tuileries, he was in close connection relent, and that at last some share in the with the agents whom the Emperor Alexander, honours of the state would reward so much then by no means favourably disposed towards assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He France, employed to watch all that passed at was bitterly undeceived. Under the imperial Paris; was permitted to read all their secret constitution the electoral college of the depart-despatches; was consulted by them as to the ments did not possess the right of choosing temper of the public mind and the character senators or deputies, but merely that of pre- of Napoleon; and did his best to persuade senting candidates. From among these can- them that the government was in a tottering didates the emperor named members of the condition, and that the new sovereign was not, senate, and the senate named members of the as the world supposed, a great statesman and legislative bodies. The inhabitants of the soldier. Next, Barère, still the flatterer and Upper Pyrenees were still strangely partial to talebearer of the imperial court, connected Barère. In the year 1805, they were disposed himself in the same manner with the Spanish to present him as a candidate for the senate. envoy. He owns that with that envoy he had On this Napoleon expressed the highest dis relations which he took the greatest pains to pleasure; and the president of the electoral conceal from his own government; that they college was directed to tell the voters, in plain met twice a day, and that their conversation terms, that such a choice would be disgraceful chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon, on to the department. All thought of naming his designs against Spain, and on the best Barère a candidate for the senate was conse- mode of rendering those designs abortive. In quently dropped. But the people of Argelès truth, Barère's baseness was unfathomable. ventured to name him a candidate for the In the lowest deeps of shame he found out legislative body. That body was altogether lower deeps. It is bad to be a sycophant; it destitute of weight and dignity; it was not is bad to be a spy: But even among sycopermitted to debate; its only function was to phants and spies there are degrees of meanvote in silence for whatever the governmeniness. The vilest sycophant is he who privily proposed. It is not easy to understand how slanders the master on whom he fawns; the any man, who had sat in free and powerful vilest spy is he who serves foreigners against deliberative assemblies, could condescend 10 the government of his native land. bear a part in such a mummery. Barère, how- From 1807 to 1814 Barère lived in obscurity, ever, was desirous of a place even in this mock railing as bitterly as his craven cowardice legislature; and a place even in this inock would permit against the imperial administra legislature was refused to him. In the whole tion, and coming sometimes unpleasantly senate he had not a single vote.

across the police. When the Bourbons res Such treatment was sufficient, it might have turned, he, as might be expected, became a been thought, to move the most abject of royalist, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth the mankind to resentment. Still, however, Ba- horrors of the system from which the Restora rère cringed and fawned on. His letters came tion had delivered France, and magaifying the

wisdom and goodness which had dictated the when compared with those which were de. charter. He who had voted for the death of manded by M. de Labourdonnaye and M. Hyde Louis, he who had moved the decree for the de Neuville. We have always heard, and are trial of Marie Antoinette, he whose hatred of inclined to believe, that the government was monarchy had led him to make war even upon not disposed to treat even the regicides with the sepulchres of ancient monarchs, assures severity. But on this point the feeling of the us with great complacency, that " in this work Chamber of Deputies was so strong, that it monarchical principles and attachment to the was thought necessary to make some concesHouse of Bourbon are nobly expressed.” By sion. It was enacted, therefore, that whoever, this apostacy he got nothing, not even any having voted in January 1793 for the death of additional infamy; for his character was al- Louis the Sixteenth, had in any manner giren ready too black to be blackened.

in an adhesion to the government of Buona. During the hundred days he again emerged parte during the hundred days, should be bar. for a very short time into public life; he was ished for life from France. Barère fell within chosen by his native district a member of the this description. He had voted for the death Chamber of Representatives. But though that of Louis; and he had sai in the Chamber of assembly was composed in a great measure of Representatives during the hundred days. men who regarded the excesses of the Jaco. He accordingly retired to Belgium, and rebins with indulgence, he found himself an ob-sided there, forgotten by all mankind, till the ject of general aversion. When the President year 1830. Afier the Revolution of July he tirs: informed the Chamber that M. Barère re- was at liberty to return to France, and he fixed quested a hearing, a deep and indignant mur- his residence in his native province. But he mur ran round the benches. After the balile was soon involved in a succession of lawsuits of Waterloo, Barère proposed that the Cham- with his nearest relations~"three fatal sisters ber should save France from the victorious and an ungrateful brother,” to use his own enemy, by putting forth a proclamation about words. Who was in the right is a question the pass of Thermopyla, and the Lacedæmno- about which we have no means of judging. nian custom of wearing flowers in times of and certainly shall not take Barère's word. extreme danger. Whether this composition, The courts appear to have decided some points if it had then appeared, would have stopped in his favour and some against him. The the English and Prussian armies, is a question natural inference is, that there were faults on respecting which we are left to conjecture. all sides. The result of this litigation was, The Chamber refused to adopt this last of the that the old man was reduced to extreme Carmagnoles.

poverty, and was forced to sell his paternal The Emperor had abdicated. The Bourbons house. relurned. The Chamber of Representatives, As far as we can judge from the few facts after burlesquing during a few weeks the pro- which remain to be mentioned, Barère conceedings of the National Convention, retired tinued Barère to the last. After his exile he with the well-earned character of having been turned Jacobin again, and, when he came back the silliest political assembly that had met in to France, joined the party of the extreme left France. Those dreaming pedants and praters in railing at Louis Philippe, and at all Louis never for a moment comprehended their posi- Philippe's ministers. M. Casimir Périer, M. tion. They could never understand that Eu- de Broglie, M. Guizot, and M. Thiers, in par. rope must be either conciliated or vanquished; ticular, are honoured with his abuse; and the that Europe could be conciliated only by the king himself is held up to execration as a hy. restoration of Louis, and vanquished only by pocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Bardre had means of a dictatorial power entrusted to Na- no scruple about accepting a charitable dona. poleon. They would not hear of Louis; yet tion of a thousand francs a year from the privy they would not hear of the only measures purse of the sovereign whom he hated and re. which could keep him out. They incurred the viled. This pension, together with some small enmity of all foreign powers by putting Napo- sums occasionally doled out to him by the deleon at their head; yet they shackled him, partment of the Interior, on the ground that he thwarted him, quarrelled with him about every was a distressed man of letters, and by the trifle, abandoned him on the first reverse. department of Justice, on the ground that he They then opposed declamations and disquisi- had formerly held a high judicial office, saved Lions to eight hundred thousand bayonets; him from the necessity of begging his bread. played at making a constitution for their coun. Having survived all his colleagues of the retry, when it depended on the indulgence of the nowned committee of public safety, and almost victor whether they should have a country; all his colleagues of the Convention, he died and were at last interrupted in the midst of in January 1811. He had attained his eighty. their babble about the rights of man and the sixth year. sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers of We have now laid before our readers what Wellington and Blucher.

we believe to be a jusi acconnt of this maa's A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, life. Can it be necessary for us to add any No bitterly hostile to the Revolution, that there thing for the purpose of assisting their juda was no small risk of a new reign of terror. meni of his character? If we were writing It is just, however, to say that the king, his about any of his colleagnes in the committee ministers, and his allies, exerted themselves to of public safety, about Carnot, abont Robes. restrain the violence of the fanatical royalists, pierre, or St. Just

, nay, even about Coulhoa, and that the punishments inflicted, though in Collot, or Billaud, we might feel it necessary our opinion unjustifiarle, were few' and lenient lo go into a full examination of the arguments

a

which have been employed to vindicate or to Terror. Violence, and more violence, blocd, excuse the system of Terror. We could, we and more blood, nade up their whole policy. think, show ihat France was saved from her in a few months these poor creatures succeeded foreign enemies, not by the system of Terror, in bringing about a reaction, of which none of but in spite of it; and that the perils which them saw, aud of which none of us may see, were made the plea for the violent policy of the the close; and, having brought it about, they Mountain, were, to a great extent, created by marvelled at it; they be wailed it; they exe. that very policy. We could, we think, also crated it; they ascribed it 10 every thing but show that the evils produced by the Jacobin the real cause their own immoraliiy and their administration did not terminate when it fell; own profound incapacity for the conduct of that it bequeathed a long series of calamities great affairs. to France and to Europe ; that public opinion, These, however, are considerations to which, which had during two generations been con- on the present occasion, it is hardly necessary stantly becoming more and more favourable for us to advert; for, the defence which has to civil and religious freedom, underwent, dur- been set up for the Jacobin policy, good or bad, ing the days of Terror, a change of which the it is a defence which cannot avail Barère. traces are still to be distinctly perceived. It From his own life, from his own pen, from his was natural that there should be such a change, own mouth, we can prove that the part which when men saw that those who called them- he took in the work of blood is to be attributed, selves the champions of popular rights had not even 10 sincere fanaticism, not even to compressed into the space of twelve months misdirected and ill-regulated patriotism, but more crimes than the kings of France, Mero- either to cowardice, or to delight in human vingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian, had per. misery. Will it be pretended that it was from peirated in twelve centuries. Freedom was public spirit that he murdered the Girondists ? regarded as a great delusion. Men were will. In these very Memoirs he tells us that he al. ing to submit to the government of hereditary ways regarded their death as the greatest princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of calamity that could befall France. Will it be priests; to any government but thai of philo- pretended that it was from public spirit that he sophers and philanthropists. Hence the im- raved for the head of the Austrian woman? perial despotism, with its enslaved press and in these very Memoirs he tells us that the time its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than spent in attacking her was ill-spent, and onght the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obse- to have been employed in concerting measures quious than the old parliaments. Hence the of national defence. Will it be pretended that restoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, he was induced by sincere and earnest abhorthe Chamber of 1815, with its categories of rence of kingly government to butcher the living proscription, the revival of the feudal spirit, and to outrage the dead; he who invited Nathe encroachments of the clergy, the persecu- poleon to take the title of King of Kings, he tion of the Protestants, the appearance of a new who assures us, that after the Restoration he breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full expressed in noble language his attachment to light of the nineteenth century. Hence the monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon ? Had admission of France into the Holy Alliance, he been less mean, something might have been and the war waged by the old soldiers of the said in extenuation of his cruelty. Had he tri-colour againsi the liberties of Spain. Hence, been less cruel, something might have been too, the apprehensions with which, even at the said in extenuation of his meanness. But for present day, the most temperate plans for widen- him, regicide and court-spy, for him who paing the narrow basis of the French represen- tronized Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for tation are regarded by those who are especially him who wantoned alternately in gasconades interested in the security of property and the of Jacobinism, and gasconades of servility, maintenance of order. Half a century has not what excuse has the largest charity to offer ! sufficed to obliterate the stain which one year We cannot conclude without saying someof depravity and madness has left on the thing about two parts of his character, which noblest of causes.

his biographer appears to consider as deserving Nothing is more ridiculous than the manner of high admiration. Barère, it is admitted, was in which writers like M. Hippolyte Carnot somewhat fickle; but in two things he was defend or excuse the Jacobin administration, consis:ent, in his love of Christianity, and in while they declaim against the reaction which his hatred to England. If this were so, we followed." That the reaction has produced and must say that England is much more beholden is still producing much evil, is perfectly true. to him than Christianity. But what produced the reaction? The spring It is possible that our inclinations may bias fies up with a force proportioned to that with our judgment; but we think that we do not which it has been pressed down. The pendu. Hatter ourselves when we say, that Barère's lum which is drawn far in one direction swings aversion to our country was sentiment as as far in the other. The joyous madness of deep and constant as his mind was capable of intoxication in the evening is followed by lan- entertaining. The value of this compliment guor and nausea on the morrow. And so, in is, indeed, somewhat diminished by the cirpolitics, it is the sure law that every excess cumstance, that he knew very little about us. shall generate its opposite; nor does he deserve His ignorance of our institutions, manners, and the name of a statesinan who strikes a great history, is the less excusable, because, accordblow without fully calculating the effect of the ing to his own account, he consorted much, rebound. But such calculation was infinitely during the peace of Amiens, with Englishmen beyond the reach of the authors of the Reign of Iof pote, such as that eminent nobleman Lord